Albany Ready to Declare Victory and Adopt Budget

By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK,

Published: April 2, 1992

ALBANY, Thursday, April 2—
Despite having to miss the legal deadline by more than a day and rely on a last-minute accounting trick to settle a caustic battle over school aid, the New York State Legislature was set to declare victory this morning and give final approval to a $56.5 billion state budget.

But in a fitting conclusion to five months of exhaustive haggling here over the state's finances, the passage was held up by mechanical problems in getting the 2,200 pages of the budget bills printed and by 11th-hour objections from some lawmakers to the new taxes in the budget accord on banks, hospitals and insurance companies.

Legislators, after planning to conduct an all-night marathon to complete the budget, instead broke around 4 A.M. Wednesday and then straggled back to the Capitol a few hours later.

In a contentious private meeting that lasted more than seven hours, the leader of the Republican-controlled State Senate, Ralph J. Marino, scrambled to hold together enough votes for the tax portion of the budget bill after several of his Republican colleagues pleaded with him to be released from having to vote in favor of the taxes during an election year. Approval of the spending part of the budget did not seem to pose any problems for these lawmakers. Officially Late Already

The budget was already officially late once Wednesday, April 1, began, but lawmakers had been pushing to get it done sometime during the day and then argue that they had basically met the deadline.

The Assembly finished all its budget work by 11:30 P.M. Wednesday and the chamber's Speaker, Saul Weprin, joked in a closing address to colleagues that he had been scrutinizing the international dateline on his office globe "to find someplace, somewhere, where it's still yesterday." But the Legislature's official work, nonetheless, stretched into this morning because the Senate was running well behind in passing bills in its house.

Throughout the past 24 hours, many lawmakers seemed bleary-eyed and short-tempered during floor debates, lending a touch of absurdity to their deliberations.

Assemblyman George Winner of Elmira, a Republican, railed at his Democratic colleagues for having passed "pork barrel" legislation and dramatized his speech by tossing a sack of toy pink pig snouts on the desk of the chairman of the Democratic-led chamber's Ways and Means Committee.

The chairman, Sheldon Silver of Manhattan, quickly denounced the ploy and demanded to know whether Mr. Winner had used public money to buy his props, which cost $1.58 each including tax.

"Mr. Chairman, the taxpayers of New York did not pay for those noses," Mr. Winner shot back as both sides of the chamber dissolved into guffaws.

In an annual and oft-maligned rite here, the Legislature managed to slip in millions of dollars of last-minute "member item" spending for projects favored by individual lawmakers, like $100,000 for promotion of Long Island seafood and $20,000 for development of a potato resistant to the golden nematode, a pesky worm.

Other scrutiny focused on the $50 million sale of a parking area at the Aqueduct race track in Queens from one quasi-public authority to another, which Assemblyman George Friedman of the Bronx referred to as "that damn parking lot deal" during a floor debate on Wednesday.

The proceeds of the sale would largely be used to distribute more state aid among the state's 720 school districts.

As an election-year document, the new budget does not appear to be anything for lawmakers to get excited about since it cuts many state-aid programs and provides for minimal increases in others.

Still, after seven years in which the budget was days or weeks late -- including last year, when it was adopted a record nine weeks after the April 1 deadline -- the relative timeliness was a political plus.

Despite a small increase in drivers' license fees and the new taxes on health providers and insurers, which these groups say they will pass on to consumers, the budget does avoid any increases in the most visible taxes, including the sales or personal income taxes. It also assures no further increases this year in the New York City subway and bus fare or the fares for commuter railroads and most upstate transit systems.

And by restoring some of the spending from reductions proposed by the Governor, including the $240 million in cuts he planned in school aid, the lawmakers are clearly hoping to portray themselves to their constituents as having successfully warded off the worst cuts.

One other effect of the budget delay was that the state missed a $329.5 million Medicaid payment due April 1 to hospitals, nursing homes, doctors and pharmacies across the state.

Although the State Comptroller's office had the checks ready to send, the lack of a budget left it with no legal authority to release them until today at the earliest. Officials of at least two New York City hospitals said their cash flows were so tight that while they could tolerate a one-day glitch, a longer delay could seriously threaten their ability to meet payrolls, to pay vendors or to provide some services.

Photo: State Senator Guy J. Velella, left, meets with John Bozzella, Director of Legislative Affairs for New York City, by the Senate conference room. (David Jennings for The New York Times)